Posts by Joshua Arbury
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Agreed, what a crazy game.
I spent all of exrra time hiding in bedroom under blanket demanding score updates every 30 seconds from my girlfriend.
When we got the final goal... well I'm surprised more people haven't commented: "what was that strange roar we heard from the direction of Herne Bay at 10.50 last night?"
Unbelievable. I still remember the tragedy of '99, this finally made up for that.
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Yeah that's another one I didn't even bother commenting on. There are approximately 35,000 rail trips on a weekday across the Auckland network. I think the busiest point along SH1 between Puhoi and Wellsford carries around 20,000 vehicles a day, and that's in Warkworth. Once you get outside a town, generally between Puhoi and Warkworth it's 15,000, north of Warkworth it's 10,000.
More bullshit from Joyce.
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Ha ha, well I spotted at least three lies in Joyce's answers in parliament today.
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Let's just hope that Len gets some good advisors on hand so that he doesn't get bullied by Mr Joyce.
I agree with Sacha that the landscape has changed. These are exciting times for PT advocates, though we don't want to lose the momentum.
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Remember that 2008 was also "$2 a litre petrol" year. Across the board a lot less kilometres were driven in 2008. From memory the road toll was about 20 less than any other year since the 1960s as well (which makes one think, is raising petrol tax the best way to cut the road toll).
In the end it's probably a combination of factors. However, I don't think any of the factors are particularly short-term.
Northern Busway patronage is still growing at about 20% year-on-year. Probably one of the smartest things we could do to get more people on public transport would be to buy some big long new bendy buses and run them as Northern Express services. Then expand the Albany Park & Ride, build some apartments on the vacant land next to Akoranga busway station and there ya go.
In terms of higher oil prices, we could probably have a whole thread on them - but keeping things really short I think it's pretty obvious that in the longer run prices will be higher than they are now, not lower.
As employment continues to increase on the North Shore (ie. as Albany develops further) more people on the Shore will be able to work without crossing the bridge. Many of the worst traffic on the Harbour Bridge is now experienced in the evenings southbound (ie - against the peak flow).
In short, there are quite a few factors to suggest that we think really carefully before committing $4 billion to another harbour crossing.
Some further thoughts that I've had in the past on this matter are able to be read here.
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I suspect it's much more than the two official park and rides at Albany and Constellation. This graph tends to indicate that around 9000ish people catch PT across the Harbour Bridge into Auckland's CBD during the 7-9am peak.
How many park and ride spaces are there? 500 at each of the two stations? Plus a few hundred more sprinkled around streets I suppose.
It still indicates that a large number of people catch feeder buses, or catch express buses that go through local streets before ending up on the busway.
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I'd be interested, if they're not too difficult to find.
The 2005 to 2009 stats are available to read here.
2005 - 166126
2006 - 168754
2007 - 165737
2008 - 154925
2009 - 158102(note, I have added together centre-span and both clip ons to get this total)
So not exactly a steady decline, but a fairly significant decline all the same.
Would it reduce congestion? Or would car numbers remain static like they seem to have with the busway? Not that it really matters if car numbers drop or not, it's just as much a win if they stay static.
That's a good question really - would the roads just fill up with other cars when people switch to public transport? Possibly to some extent, although there is probably a significant economic advantage to being able to get 25,000 people across the Harbour Bridge in two peak hours compared to say 20,000.
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Steve, NZTA show AADT (daily flow averaged over a year) for each bit of state highway. I can't remember the exact figures, but I should be able to find them.
35% of people crossing the bridge on PT at peak times is pretty good. Around 50% of people entering the CBD at peak times also do so on PT. It's a cunny trick of Steven joyce to ignore this data and instead focus on total modeshare, which is less relevant as many of the car trips are short and to dispersed locations, so don't contribute much to congestion.
If we could get the Harbour Bridge PT modeshare up to 50% I don't reckon we'd need another road crossing. Similarly, if we could get CBD-bound PT modeshare up to 75% the effect would be dramatic: far more pleasant inner-city streets and generally much less congestion.
On a similar but slightly different note, I hope that councillors representing the Mangere area get right behind the push for airport rail. If there's ever an infrastructure project that will help improve the lot of people living in that part of Auckland, that is it. Mangere residents probably vie with those in Howick for having the city's worst PT.
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The other problem with a bridge option is the question of whether we really want two bridges across the Harbour. NZTA are determined (and with good reason) to ensure that any new crossing is additional, not a replacement crossing.
My general feeling on another Harbour Crossing is "what's the hurry?" Traffic flows across the Harbour Bridge have been steadily declining over the past 5 years as employmenr on the Shore grows and as more people choose to bus into town. Around 35% of people crossing the bridge at peak times are on a bus.
Sure eventually the clipons will fall off, but that's ages away, and if we have a rail tunnel by then the bridge should be able to cope being six lanes as we replace the clipons one at a time.
Remember, the harbour crossing project has a cost of $4 billion or more. Would that money be better spent on a railway line out to southeast Auckland? I'd be curious.
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Craig, I agree with you in many respects that Brown has given himself transport goals that are nigh on impossible to achieve. And others which are a bit pointless (like rail to North Shore, which has a shiny new busway).
My main point though is that clearly rail plans win votes.
By 2013 it should be fairly easy to have the CBD tunnel underway (the big commitment Len has made). We just need to cull a billion from the holiday highway and spend it on this project. The Super City can cull $500 million from AMETI, which is largely the bad old Eastern Highway in drag and we've found the funding.